"We will dance a polka. I will sing. I will be gentleman; I will steer you."
Then I heard my uncle calling her: "Irinel! Irinel! Where are you?"
She disappeared in a second.
I threw myself on my bed. I took up the "Chronicles," but instead of reading I began to think. "Irinel! Irinel!" The first Irinel was quick, severe, malicious, the second one was lingering, much softer, almost caressing. Of course he had meant to reassure her, he had wanted to deceive me. He thought to make me believe he had meant nothing. But what did that "Where are you?" signify?
I understood from the way in which he had said "where" that there lay the real drift of the question. He had not anything to say to her, but he very much wanted to know "where" she was. In other words, was she perchance with me in my room? Such espionage was humiliating for an orphan whose whole life he had directed, and whose fortune he had controlled, because he had the right to say to him with a single word, by a single look: "This is how I reward an ungrateful person, a youth who has no regard for the old men who are soon to pass away, burying with them the moral customs of this country." That "Where are you?" was as clear as noonday. Do you suppose he did not know where she was?
"Ah! An orphan must not fall in love!"
I don't know what other thoughts I had. The door of the room opened; Irinel stood in the doorway.
How great an unhappiness it is to see happiness standing on the threshold, and to know it will not cross; that it will remain yonder, so near and yet so far!
Irinel crossed the threshold; she came up to me. I realized that she had crossed the threshold, but still my happiness remained outside. I understood the old man had sent her back in order to deceive me, and that she had guessed nothing.
"Do you know what Father has just told me? A guest is coming to us at the festival of St. Peter. A big merchant."
What did that mean?
"And did he say anything else?"
"Nothing; but yes, he did. We are to kill our fattest chicken and the house is to be put into the most spick and span order, for our guest is an important merchant, a deputy, elderly, and I don't know what all and what else."
After teasing me and laughing at me because I coughed just as the girls at school did to make the doctor prescribe iron and old wine, but more particularly old wine than iron, Irinel left me.
"Ugh! It's lucky he is old. Supposing he had been a young man?"
On St. Peter's day I rose in such a state of anxiety that I started at every sound. Has it not been known for old men to lose their heads and marry girls of eighteen?
For three hours I wandered about the grounds. I waited for this rival with the same impatience with which I once waited for Irinel to come quickly from school. Am I deceiving myself or not? The same sensations, identically the same, were present with me, waiting thus for the object of my hatred as when I waited for her I loved. I wanted to see him as soon as possible; for a second; just to know him; to find out who he was.
At ten o'clock a carriage drew up in front of the door. Some one got out. When I saw him I began to laugh. He was very feeble, he was very old. No doubt he was smart with his black coat and red tie. I greeted him with respect, I might almost say with affection, and then, sorry at having felt hatred for such an old man, with such snowwhite hair, I went quietly into the garden. I turned down one of the paths. How sad and drear do the most beautiful natural surroundings become when they are reflected by a sad and lonely heart? What indifference everywhere!
The garden gate was opened rather hastily as though the wind had forced it. Irinel appeared. She looked all round, then, seeing me, she flew towards me. The breeze which she made by her flight fluttered her thin gown of white batiste with black spots.
She was pale. She took my hand. Her own trembled. She tried to speak, and said several times:
"Wait, wait, wait while I get my breath----"
Then she became silent and looked at me. Oh, what a look! Her eyes flashed sparks. Their blue depths seemed to me like an incomprehensible ocean, tempest driven, without bottom, without boundaries. I looked down, overwhelmed by an inexplicable fear, by a powerful emotion. I noticed my boots, and I thought to myself: "Have they cleaned my boots to-day or not? Of course, they must have. Don't they clean them every day?"
"Iorgu, do you know why that old man has come?"
"No," I answered her, with a stupid calm.
Had they cleaned my boots? Perhaps the dew was still on the grass.
"Iorgu, do you know what Father said to me?"
"No."
"'Put on your foulard gown.'"
"Your foulard gown? The one I like so much?"
"But do you know why he wanted me to?"
"Of course I do."
She trembled.
I continued, as I took out my handkerchief and flicked the dust from one of my boots:
"Of course I know. Isn't to-day a great festival?"
"Ah," she replied as she withdrew the hand I was holding, "you understand nothing! What an indifferent and non-understanding man you are!"
Indifferent? I understood everything from her look and her emotion, and with a calmness which I was certainly far from feeling I bent down and dusted the other boot.
"The old man has come, Irinel----" I said, glancing at her for a moment.
She was white, her lower lip quivered, the light in her eyes had darkened.
"The old man has come, Irinel. What then? He will dine with us? All the better. We shall be a bigger party at table."
Was it I speaking? There were only she and I in the garden.
"The old man has come, has come. Alas!" she replied, covering her eyes with both her hands. "The old man has come and some one is going to leave this house! He has----"
Irinel began to cry.
"What has he?"
"A son who is an engineer."
"Engineer? Has he learnt engineering?"
"Yes, he has learnt engineering!" Irinel replied angrily, and uncovered her crimson cheeks. "Yes, he has learnt en-gi-neer-ing, and some one is going to leave this house!"
I watched how she stood in the doorway, and then crossed it lightly as she wiped away her tears on a clean corner of her gown. I looked long after her, then I threw myself face upwards under one of the fruit-trees.
Nature was full of life! The apple-trees bent their great boughs; the sparrows chattered, some of them were fluttering their wings, others were collecting into groups preparing for a fierce fight. Little patches of sunlight played upon my face. When I felt two rows of tears trickling into my ears, I jumped to my feet, I gazed towards the door, and said gently, full of a profound melancholy:
"Some one is going to leave this house!"